


forget my brain (remember my name)

by Simply_Isnt_On



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Aliases, Gentleman Thief, Interplanetary Travel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 23:53:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14779656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simply_Isnt_On/pseuds/Simply_Isnt_On
Summary: I tried to run away that night. But you can’t run away from your own name.





	forget my brain (remember my name)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akissontitan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akissontitan/gifts).



> This one is for @nixiad on tumblr. A thousand apologies, I forgot to post this and then forgot that I forgot.

These are the things that Peter Nureyev knows, and he lists them to himself as he scrubs blood from his fingers, blood and tears and sand. Juno Steel knows his name, and so he cannot leave this man behind. Juno Steel knows his heart, and so he cannot leave this man behind. Juno Steel knows his mind, and so he cannot leave this man behind.

He scrubs too hard and the nail brush gouges a hangnail and he hisses, the fresh pain against old wounds causing the old crusted filth to sting as the water and the soap and the anti-viral solution fall from his hands and swirl away down the drain. He scrubs until there is nothing, until, he is sure, the upper layer of cells and skin on his hands have been sloughed off and spun down through the sewers long ago into the ancient Martian deserts. When he lifts them, sets the nail brush down and rinses the last of the suds from his long fingers and chipped nails, his fingers are pink and his palms ache.

Nureyev applies a balm, unscented, uneasy. Were he Duke Rose, the balm would hold the scent of flowers, of roses; and Glass, well, Glass had always had that curious mixture of frankincense and citrus on his skin. Nureyev he has not worn in so long he cannot remember what smell to wear. The unscented balm, chemically identical to old-Earth beeswax, scrapes unease against his nerves even as it soothes his abused skin.

It has been two hours since he watched Juno Steel follow a nurse into an exam room and shut the door, and now he waits with unease, clean, balmed hands dangling from wrists that rest on knees clothed in the garish green suit that Duke Rose had worn so long ago. It hadn’t been garish then; juxtaposed against Juno’s pink, both accented in shades of rose and tangerine, and oh, but the lady had worn it like a king.

He had found this suit after, after he’d wrapped Juno’s face in a spare shirt and before he’d bundled him into the Ruby 7 and driven to Hyperion General. The assistants had fled, and he’d let them, concerned only with getting Juno to safety.

“Safety” had meant letting people fuss over him too, and Jason Noble was nothing if not accommodating, put-upon, insistent that his lady-friend be seen to first. Juno looked enough a mess, losing blood despite the homemade eyepatch, and staggering, and Jason assisted him, nodded along to everything the attendants said, told them he didn’t know, it had been a tumor, and that Juno didn’t speak Martian.

It has been three hours, and now he watches Juno Steel leave an exam room on a hover chair, woozy with quickly abating pain medication, a medical grade, off-white eyepatch over his right eye and a packet of care instructions and cleaning supplies on his lap. Nureyev straightens, stands quickly, body quivering in every inch with a question he dares not ask out loud.

The box on Juno’s hands answers the question for him. Juno stands up from the hover chair as it stops, just past the threshold, and he notices the box as Juno gathers his things from his lap. In it rests a plasticine prosthetic eyeball.

There are things Peter Nureyev knows, and he reviews them as he meets Juno Steels single remaining eye and feels his heart break. Juno Steel has lost his eye, and so he cannot work. Juno Steel cannot shoot, and so he cannot work. Juno Steel cannot stay, and so he cannot work.

Jason Noble hails a cab.

***

Peter Nureyev has his fist in his mouth before he is fully awake, and his heart is racing, and even though he barely managed a bite to eat the day before, he is sure that at any moment, he will be sick. The bedding chokes him, silk sheets like a knot at his throat, stopping him from lashing out, from rolling off the bed entirely and spinning through the air.

There are large, round windows here, on this ship, and he can see the stars, and after a moment, he forces his heartbeat back, forces it to stop trying to break through his sternum and fly back to Mars. He has opted for a room alone, as always, lodgings that afford him privacy when nightmares allow his secrets to slip past his lips on whimpers and whispers he cannot control.

He unbinds himself and pushes away, till he is flush against the window, staring out at the unforgiving darkness studded with light. “Juno,” he murmurs, one more secret post to the quiet of this room. He had searched it for bugs before he slept, a habit which has served him well. There, just north of the Small Magellanic Cloud, the white swirl of the Milky Way spins.

Cyrus Tellurium knows where he is going. He is a mourner, and for a modest fee he mourns beloved dead to the next life, and he is on his way to wail himself hoarse on behalf of the Empress Calypsia, recently deceased. In his single bag, Cyrus carries his mourning robes, embroidered all over with alphabets in every known tongue, with as many characters and glyphs as could be added, so that when he walks, his myriad layers swathe him in every language, hide his face in the grief of ages and times and civilizations.

Cyrus has practiced. He is very good. He will throw himself at the feet of the family, in front of the women who sent for him, and cry out, voice strong and wordless, until it breaks off into silence. This, not the robes, is how they will know it is him.

And after they are satisfied that the empress, wife and mother of the kingdom and ruler supreme, has been properly mourned to her sleep? Cyrus will take from them the thing he has been sent to collect. Not crown jewels, no, nothing so crass, but the book of lineage of the kingdom, jealously guarded, a book kept from common eyes. Lineage which could prevent her chosen heir from taking the the throne.

But Cyrus Tellurium is not here, not yet. Peter Nureyev has woken up here, in this room, once again, screaming pain and whispering secrets that Cyrus has no right to know, and Peter Nureyev will not leave him alone. Peter Nureyev cannot wear that robe, and Peter Nureyev cannot cry his cry, cannot mourn the beloved dead of the empire of Shin-du, cannot send the empress to her rest. And so, he has no right to be here.

And yet, this is the third night Peter Nureyev has found his way here, beyond his welcome, wearing skin too big for him, while Cyrus Tellurium has a job to do. The two regard each other, wary, and neither finds an answer to their shared problem.

***

On Saturn, Kieran Silk flashes smiles and peddles art and takes a job as a butler, passing important papers under his comms as he tends the very wealthy at their shining parties. The sharp smell of ginger decorates his wrists and throat, for weeks, as he flirts lightly, genteel yet chaste, with each person who takes an eye to him, so that they leave believing him to be an excellent butler, or else a terrible tease.

At the darkening of the last night of the year, when those who manage the house become guests for a night, Kieran slips into a shining red suit, dabs a secret scent behind his ears and dances with all who will take his hand. But none of them have the stumble in their step he’s looking for, and many try all too soon to kiss him.

The new year dawns, and finds Peter Nureyev wearing Kieran’s suit, standing on a balcony, back pressed against the chest of a woman whose face he can’t be bothered to recall. She leans down to kiss him and he steps forward against the balcony’s shining gossamer railing, barely touching, to protect the fabric of his suit. The city is lit up in greens and silvers, and from the far horizon he can see the stars begin to fade against the rings of ice and debris as the sun rises.

“Such a beautiful night,” he sighs, but his mind is elsewhere once more, on an unremarkable red planet full of blue sunsets and one very remarkable lady.

“Yes,” she agrees, stepping forward as her hands settle on his hips, clearly not ready to cease her advances, but now Nureyev is once again wearing clothes not meant for him, and where Kieran Silk might have chuckled and flirted and slipped away to see about a few more papers before his early morning skyrail, Peter Nureyev finds he cannot stomach the song and dance Kieran must put on for her.

“You know-” and he stops, biting off the nearly-spoken “darling”, wondering if she can hear it hanging in the air, hear the way his throat closes around his heart, riding high in his throat. “You know, I’d forgotten something.”

“What’s that?” she asks, hands sliding down his hips, over his belly, and he turns in her arms, letting his back lean against the handrail as he raises his face and kisses her, once, twice, kisses that taste already of ash as she blinks down at him in confusion, pupils dilating before losing focus.

He catches her as she falls, escorts her to the bedroom she had hoped they would use to christen the new year, leaves her to sleep off the drug as he pats the rest of the stain off his lips and slips down the hall to his own quarters.

Kieran Silk’s employers will find a replacement from the butler agency on their doorstep within two hours, and within a week they will be bankrupt without knowing why, their side endeavors defunct. Peter Nureyev, in a passenger cryo chamber aboard a starship headed for planet designation Kepler-348b, waits, suspended in time, to slip into the next persona, the next life, and, frozen as he is, cannot dwell on how even here he has not left Juno Steel behind.

***

Kepler-348b finds Augustus Norton in need of a partner, someone to take the fall when he disappears from the net he has already begun to weave. He tracks one down easily enough, a cop on the wrong side of the law who thinks Norton is wet behind the ears and easily swayed, with eyes looking for wool.

Augustus works the beat with him, learning the rhythms of Ripley County and cringing with fear whenever danger happens.

Brian Lamarr is a nasty man with a habit of arresting people for the nasty habits in their pockets. Petty theft, apparently, is not below him, and he churns powders and pills onto the market almost as soon as he collects them. Augustus watches for months as he turns evidence into cash and people into alibis, victims, scapegoats, and he formulates a plan.

He watches again as Lamarr fails to investigate sounds of pain one night, a man calling out for help. He realizes that Nureyev, with all his memories, has slipped into his jacket, is holding his baton aloft. That Nureyev can no longer let this pass.

Lamarr doesn’t object; on the contrary, he lets Nureyev examine the entrances to the house- if it could be called that- and watches him kick down the door in bemusement. He waits at the curb and lights a stolen cigarette as he listens to the grunts and aborted shouts from within the house, and exhales the acrid smoke as the noises stop.

It takes Nureyev a long moment to draw Augustus back to him, to allow himself to drain away. The man on the floor is groaning, and the man in the chair is shaking, full of fear and nervous energy.

A moment is all it takes to knock the first man out, and then Augustus kneels before the shaking man, face soft, concerned. It is there he learns what he had not been sure of, the last details he needs about the gang plaguing the city, from a man who has no friends among their members. He rises and escorts the unconscious man to the car waiting outside, knowing that when he returns to the house the chair will be empty.

He recognizes the man’s need to disappear, and does not comment.

~

Nureyev rides Augustus’ shoulder all the way to the station, and this time quiet, foolish, gullible Augustus is the one to search the man, the one to take his statement. Without Lamarr to edit- after all, he didn’t know what had taken place in that building- Augustus discovers the name of the leader and lets slip just enough details of Lamarr’s trickery to see his eyes sharpen, narrow. The man will end up in a jail cell or worse, for the drugs on his person and the assault, but that is not Augustus’ concern.

He seeks out the police chief, tells her he’s concerned about Lamarr, about the evidence that doesn’t match and the blind eye he turns and the stolen cigarettes. He doesn’t mention the money he is siphoning from Lamarr’s accounts, or the man who had run that night, who waited even now to meet him at a shipyard. They would discover the money was gone in a few days; if he could help it, Augustus would see to it they never discovered the man.

Augustus leaves the station furtively glancing around, and now Nureyev glides across his skin, disdain for Lamarr thick in his throat. The man had been sloppy, cruel, and he’d had it coming. Still, he couldn’t help but compare Lamarr’s actions to those of a certain detective, who had left the force and its corruption hoping to help people and getting caught in the mire along the way.

Augustus Norton meets the man, as expected, at a shipyard with a single bag. He escorts him to a ship, doesn’t tell him about the cryo before it fills the chamber so he doesn’t scream. In his pocket, Nureyev leaves a passport, ID, a new comms unit. He watches the man slip into sleep as the pod seals, watches the ship take off for Saturn. Perhaps he will be happy there, and perhaps he will not, but he will be safe.

Nureyev takes his own seat, on a larger ship full of tourists wanting to tour the historic solar system, see the ancient rovers on all the moons. His ticket does not buy a tour, however, but is a one way trip to a small, red planet. As the cryo seeps into his chamber, he exhales with the cold, smooths his hands against his thighs, and prepares to dream once more of his lady love, his Juno.

Better than any cop, his Juno, with an electric kiss any flirting socialite would envy and enough sorrow to impress the family of an empress. He dreams of Juno’s single eye, of his fury and righteousness, and allows Peter Nureyev to slip into his skin once more.

He is not sure what waits for him on Mars. He has no job to do, no promise waiting for him. Only a lady he’d like to take to bed and a hope that he’ll let him.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not an astronomer, I just like google. If you’re an astronomer…. I’m sorry, I tried not to use too much astronomy in this but I wanted Peter to be wandering around the universe. I’m also well aware that all of the places mentioned in this story are far enough away that with the technology we have now, Nureyev would spend ~199,500+ years on space crafts….. We’re going to assume there’s some kind of warp-speed, or else interdimensional travel that’s expensive but doable at work here. The entirety of this fic takes place over the span of 1-2 years, tops.


End file.
